BACKGROUND: Many women of reproductive age are employed in industries involving exposure to organic solvents. Animal toxicological studies and human case reports demonstrate that exposure to organic solvents can cause neuropsychological deficits in exposed offspring; however, there is limited data from prospective controlled human studies.
OBJECTIVE: To compare neuropsychological functioning between children whose mothers were occupationally exposed to organic solvents during pregnancy with a non-exposed matched comparison group.
METHODS: Participants were 48 women who had previously contacted the Motherisk Program in Toronto, Canada during pregnancy regarding occupational exposure to organic solvents and a matched comparison group of women with no known exposure to teratogens during pregnancy. Children (18 months to 8 years 11 months at time of study) were compared in areas of cognitive, language, motor, and behavioral functioning.
RESULTS: Children whose mothers were exposed to organic solvents during pregnancy displayed a lower level of functioning when compared with their matched peers in areas of cognitive, language, motor, and behavioral domains. Although the scores on measures of behavioral functioning were not in the clinical range, the mothers of exposed children reported more challenging behavioral problems.
In order to determine whether exposure predicted neuropsychological outcomes above and beyond maternal intellectual functioning, hierarchical regressions were run with maternal IQ and maternal education at Step 1and exposure status added at Step 2. In utero exposure to organic solvents predicted lower sores on global measures of Verbal IQ, receptive and expressive language scales above and beyond maternal intellectual functioning. Factors associated with higher levels of exposure (detecting odor, longer duration and total number of toxicity symptoms) was associated with poorer outcome on behavioral and motor functioning tests.
CONCLUSION: Despite the fact that the exposed mothers experienced minimal symptoms of toxicity, detrimental effects were still evident in their offspring. Current safety standards for exposure were designed for adults and need to be reevaluated. Further studies addressing exposure to specific organic solvents, dose, and gestational timing of exposure are warranted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/34778 |
| Date | 17 December 2012 |
| Creators | Laslo-Baker, Dionne |
| Contributors | Koren, Gideon, Barrera, Maru, Peterson-Badali, Michele |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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